The lesser of two evils

So today was not the best day. My knee failing couldn't have come at a worse time and has turned the whole rest of our trip into a big question mark. We honestly don't know what to do next. When we were waiting for the bus in Øverkalix Geir suggested that we got a rental car from Pajala and drove to Inari, leaving only 20 miles to cycle to Kirkenes. After phoning up Hertz rental company in Pajala, however, he found that they charged 9900 Swedish kronor to rent a car for one day.

We could buy a wreck and dump it on the side of the road for that price, was Geir's response.

His second plan, seeing as bussing to Pajala went quite well, was taking a bus onwards to Inari. Asking around the the bus station revealed, though, that to get to Inari we would have to take a bus from Kolari on the other side of the border, at six in the morning, down to south Finland, then back up to north Finland. A trip that would take us eleven hours in total. About the same time it would have taken us to cycle the same distance.

So conferring with our support crew, my mother Anne, I decided that if those were our options, I would rather cycle and see how long the knee will hold.

From Pajala there's 50 miles to Kirkenes. 30 to Inari and then another 20 after that. If we manage fifteen miles a day we can get to Inari in two days. If the knee starts acting up again and we take our time we can get there in three days. Best case scenario we can get to Kirkenes in five days, which would be when we were supposed to arrive anyway. Worst case scenario we get as far as Inari, which is just close enough to the Norwegian border to arrange for our support crew to come down and rescue us on Monday.

Tomorrow we're going to have a decent breakfast and cycle to Kolera, which should only take us a few hours. If that goes well, we might continue onwards. Geir still wants us to keep all our options open, meaning he's got a finger on the rental car option. He found a Finnish car rental place in Kolera which doesn't charge as extortionate amounts as Hertz does.

In other words, despite a pretty awful turn of events, we haven't give up completely. Or at least, I haven't. Not yet anyway.

PS: Finland is mosquito country, and already we can feel it. The air is buzzing with the little pests. There are literal clouds of them following people around. Geir has been running around swatting them all evening. I wish I had a picture of it.